


True Companions: An Introduction to the Truth Behind the Tales of the Second Inquisition's Inner Circle

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, In-Universe Historical Arguments, Thedas's equivalent of Oxfordians are even more wrong than the real ones, fake academia, fake media, fic for people whose favorite part of the Jaws of Hakkon DLC was the academic bits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 07:28:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11641818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: From the 08/15:42 Wave edition of "Lay Historians," Thedas's premier magazine for the dilettante historian, comes an article that will delight all of us who grew up hearing tales of Skyhold and the Second Inquisition. Although most academic study focuses on the enigmatic and oft-debated figure of the Second Inquisitor, "Lay Historians" has chosen to explore instead the less-notorious figures of story and song who make up the tales' supporting cast.





	True Companions: An Introduction to the Truth Behind the Tales of the Second Inquisition's Inner Circle

**Author's Note:**

> I am a huge nerd.

The so-called ‘Inner Circle’ of the second Inquisitor is a popular topic in folk song, story, and morality play, a literary tradition whose earliest roots are contemporaneous with the Second Inquisition itself. Indeed, the earliest parodic account of the Second Inquisition, _All This Shit Is Weird,_ released under the pen name Varric Tethras (see below), is dated to as early as 9:44 Dragon, and was presumably written to capitalize on the Second Inquisition’s waning political power at that time. (Sadly, no original copies exist, and all versions of the text which have come down to us have suffered heavy addition and revision.) The intervening centuries have seen many fictional embellishments to the Inner Circle, including many members invented out of whole cloth; however, with care, the fact may be teased out from the fiction.

Certain members are easy to identify as wholly fictional. Most notable among these is Iron Bull, a parodic figure consistent with the comic plays of the 9:80s. The plays featured themes of social inversion and focused heavily upon characters exactly opposite to their social expectations – blunt, simple Orlesian lords, foppish and fastidious Fereldans, naïve and prudish Tevinter magisters, and so forth. The Iron Bull’s light-hearted attitude and legendary sexual escapades stand in similar contrast to the stern Qunari military, and thus mark him as a continuation of that literary tradition. His role as a Tal-Vashoth mercenary captain was added to the narrative later by way of explanation, as his popularity led to his inclusion in more serious works. Although there are factual references to a ‘Bull’s Chargers’ in the employ of the Second Inquisition, assertions that these constitute proof of Iron Bull’s existence are patently absurd. All records of the time indicate that the Second Inquisition’s forces were invariably diverse; a company or even a squadron consisting entirely of Tal-Vashoth would have attracted immediate attention, and would thus be recorded. The commonality of the ‘bull’ name is mere coincidence, and groups with similar names exist across Thedas’s history, mercenary and otherwise.

The figure of Red Sera, a gleefully mischievous and light-hearted elf with a noted disregard for the past, certainly borrows a great deal from the same inversion tradition that gave birth to Iron Bull, but her first depictions predate the tradition. The folk song ‘Sera Was Never’ has been conclusively dated to the early 9:40s, contemporaneous with the Second Inquisition, and circulated separately from early Inner Circle mythologia. Its popularity among the Red Jenny anarchist movement is well-known, as is its use as a signal by the same movement; unsurprisingly, its popularity waned after the suppression of the Nevarran anarchist uprisings in 10:53 Spirit. However, association with the figure of Red Jenny, well-known to be fictional, is hardly evidence of Red Sera’s existence. Instead, it is likelier that Red Sera was an existing or emergent folk hero grafted onto the Inner Circle by storytellers eager to ride the coattails of the Second Inquisition.

Cole the Ghost is perhaps the most obviously fictitious character; after all, if a creature could truly ‘slip from memory like water from the hand’ (Alleman balled 19, line 22), no records would exist of him to make it into popular folklore. The rise of pro-spirit sentiment around the end of the Dragon and beginning of the Spirit age, as indicated by the age’s very name, probably explains his invention. His origins are nonetheless interesting: every account of Cole which specifies his nature names him as a Compassion spirit, and the existence of Compassion spirits was not proven until the late Spirit age, nor were they general knowledge for some time after. The original Cole stories are lost – the earliest accounts known all mention him as a familiar figure – but it is certain that his original author was a dedicated student of the Fade, and thus most likely a mage. More than that, sadly, we do not know.

Thus we account for the members of the Inner Circle who we know never existed outside of the imagination, and may move on to the next category: those whose existence is empirical truth. The most remarkable of these is First Enchanter Vivienne of Montsimmard, whose literary persona is borne out surprisingly well by the historical facts. That she was the Court Enchanter of Empress Celene and seconded to the Second Inquisition by her own request are both matters of record at the Montsimmard Circle. Mid-Dragon circulars on file at the University of Orlais refer to her both as First Enchanter Vivienne and as Madame de Fer or the Iron Lady, bearing out her fictional epithets. Her rarefied circles mean some of her own personal correspondence has come down to us, enough to indicate her storied intelligence is no exaggeration – but then, perhaps it is not surprising that a veteran player of the Great Game could manipulate her persona in folklore. Entertainingly, even visual descriptions of her appearance are borne out by the portrait of her also at Montsimmard Circle.

Similarly, the involvement of Cassandra Pentaghast of Nevarra is undeniable. Even before the founding of the Second Inquisition, Lady Pentaghast was a storied figure, well-suited for mythologizing. Her roles in the hierarchies of Divines Beatrix I and Justinia V are confirmed by Chantry record. Similarly, the Divine Writ authorizing the Second Inquisition is preserved in Val Royeaux and specifies Lady Pentaghast by name as a planned Second Inquisition leader. Both Chantry documents and contemporary correspondence likewise confirm that she ascended to the Sunburst Throne as the first Divine Victoria, due in large part to the influence of the Second Inquisition and her prominence within its structure. Although she is mentioned on the rolls of the Pentaghast family, her exact relation and proximity to the throne is unknown; this very lack of documentation, however, would point against the popular description of her as a Nevarran princess. It is far likelier she came from one of the many lesser (and thus less documented) Pentaghast branches.

The Chantry records also provide a great deal of information on the Inquisition’s general. Cullen Rutherford was born a Marcher and was originally of the Kirkwall Templar Order; though relatively little documentation survived the Kirkwall Schism, some of the Circle’s domestic records were preserved, and Rutherford’s name appeared on Templar rolls dated at several points in the mid-30s of the Dragon age. The “Lyrium-Song Ballad” and subsequent depictions claim that he joined the Second Inquisition out of guilt at the Templars’ role in Kirkwall’s mid-Dragon period of instability; although this is impossible to substantiate, the timeline of his career does indicate that it is a reasonable possibility. Less probable is the same ballad’s assertion that Rutherford and the unknown ‘Red Templar’ who served Corypheus were friends or associates in Kirkwall; it is far likelier that the unnamed ‘Red Templar’, if indeed one such Coryphean general existed, was one of the knights of Therinfal Redoubt. (Many contemporary records indicate a warrior in a general’s role under Corypheus, but whether this is one role or a composite of several underlings is both undetermined and beyond our scope here.)

Once we have identified both the undeniably factual and undeniably fictitious, we are left with the murky ground of the in-betweens: those figures who may be traced back to a genuine personage, but who bear little to no resemblance to their originals.

First of these is the Inquisition’s famed bard, Golden Josie or Nightingale Josie – according to popular legend, an Orlesian noblewoman ‘poetry with a sword / lethal with a word’ (Harringham ballad 38, lines 4 & 5). She is claimed to have served as a kind of diplomat-assassin, persuasive and murderous by turns.  It is unlikely such a person existed, but the surviving correspondence of Empress Celene includes letters exchanged between her and a Lady Josephine Montilyet, representing the Second Inquisition. Lady Josephine Montilyet also apparently corresponded with the Dwarven Merchants’ Guild, King Alistair and Queen Anora of Ferelden, Marquess Briala, and numerous other nobles of Ferelden, Orlais, and the Free Marches, none of the others particularly notable. (Many of said letters are, however, on display at the Skyhold Museum and Trust.) However, these letters are as much counterpoint as corroboration for two reasons. The first is that the letters, both by existence and content, indicate that Lady Montilyet conducted her business at a distance; such negotiations as were not purely epistolary were conducted via emissaries who attended upon the Second Inquisition at Skyhold Castle. This is hardly the _modus operandi_ of a seductress-assassin, even a diplomatic one. The second contradiction is that the Montilyets were an Antivan trading family, not an Orlesian noble one; in fact, the Montilyets still exist today, and claim Josephine Montilyet I as a matriarch credited with the family’s prosperity throughout the late Dragon and early Spirit ages. This fact in turn raises a third point: firstborn heirs, either to noble or merchant families, do not become Orlesian bards unless they are so deeply incompetent that their families scheme to get rid of them, and deeply incompetent firstborn heirs do not tend to rebuild their families’ fortunes, never mind lay the groundwork for an eighty-year empire. Therefore, we can conclude that Lady Montilyet was a merchant and diplomat in the service of the Second Inquisition, but that the more dramatic parts of her story are fabrication – or perhaps borrowed from others.

It is likely that the Second Inquisition did indeed employ spies and assassins, as any political force must; it may similarly be assumed that said spies had a hierarchy and that said hierarchy had a head. Early Second Inquisition folklore makes reference to a ‘Nightingale’ or ‘Sister Nightingale’, most notably in “The Followers,” by Halewell. Though only portions of “The Followers” survive, ‘Sister Nightingale’ and ‘Josephine, noble with bright acumen’ are mentioned separately. No other information about said Nightingale is available; she may not even have been a woman. However, her connection to Josephine Montilyet is almost certainly spurious.

Next we come to the figure of Thom Rainier / Warden Blackwall. This figure is likely a composite of two. The Second Inquisition’s role in the formation of the Black or Southern Wardens is well-documented; the original Southern Wardens were those conscripted into the Second Inquisition, which led to the Wardens’ War and the Burning of Weisshaupt, themselves matters of folkloric fascination. The conscription (or subversion) of the Wardens of Adamant Fortress was aided, according to correspondence between the Southern Wardens and the main Grey Wardens before the Burning of Weisshaupt, by a Warden renegade – presumably Blackwall – who defected to the Inquisition and later died in the chaos of Adamant. Meanwhile, the records of the Val Royeax Prison include documents for the transference of Thom Rainier, traitor to the throne, to the Inquisition’s custody. Said documents postdate the Battle of Adamant by several months, conclusively disproving the idea that Rainier could have passed as Blackwall, however romantic the notion. How the two came to be conflated is not known.

The figure known primarily as the Good Magister is surprisingly complex. His most common incarnation appears to be blatant Tevinter propaganda: a leader of the early Tevinter Reformists who, appalled at the degenerate ways of the early-Dragon Imperium and at the violence of both the Tevinter Recreationists and the extremist Venatori, came south to join the Second Inquisition and rapidly became a relied-upon member of its hierarchy and a trusted personal confidante of the Second Inquisitor. The story became popular in the 9:60s, when the Second Inquisition’s role as a political threat was fading from memory, to be supplanted by its role as a folk-hero coalition, and when the Tevinter Reformists were taking legitimate hold in the Magisterium. The story served to legitimize the movement, lending them some of the cachet of the Second Inquisition; in later years, as the Reformist powers solidified, the story served to sanitize Tevinter in popular perception. Its very convenience is suspicious, and the gaps are obvious: the Tevinter Reform movement didn’t start to gain traction until the late 9:40s, several years after the dissolution of the Second Inquisition, and its most prominent leader was Maevaris Tilani, a woman who never left the Imperium at any point in the course of her life. Further, distrust of Tevinter in southern Thedas at the time of the Second Inquisition was intense, and was neither directed at nor provoked by the Venatori; the tensions predated the extremists’ rise, and were in fact entrenched by several ages. Thus the inclusion of a Tevinter magister in the Second Inquisition hierarchy appears deeply improbable.

However, further investigation reveals surprising elements of truth buried under the propaganda. The correspondence of the early Magisterium (collected by Professor Suranalis of the University of Orlais) includes a letter from Magister Arborundum to Magister Pavus conveying the Arborundum’s sympathies regarding Pavus’s son’s foolish journey south to join the Second Inquisition. Although it is unlikely that Altus Pavus occupied the trusted position he is credited with in popular folklore, the discovery of his existence led to a search for corroborative evidence, which drew attention to letters from Orlesian nobility expressing their concerns about the presence of Tevinter figures within the Inquisition. It had previously been assumed that these referred to the indentured service of Magister Alexius, but the presence of Altus Pavus casts them in a new light. Some also note the references to a ‘foreign mage’ in Warden Redstone’s _Account of the Siege of Adamant,_ an appellation which stands out in an account which denotes Fereldans, Orlesians, and Marchers specifically rather than simply calling them ‘foreign.’ It is entirely possible that these indeed refer to Pavus, and that Redstone could not or would not identify him as Tevinter.

Another tangle arises in the form of a character exclusive to Ferelden accounts of the Second Inquisition: The Witch of the Wilds. Of course, the Witch of the Wilds is a mythological figure predating the Second Inquisition by several hundred years, deriving from the often-studied Flemeth legends and appended to many historical accounts (including that of the Fifth Blight). For this reason, claims that the Witch of the Wilds assisted the Inquisitor were ignored by scholars for several ages. However, the investigation into Altus Pavus also uncovered reports of an unofficial ‘arcane advisor’ who Empress Celene seconded to the service of the Second Inquisition. This advisor was a Fereldan apostate – a true apostate, raised her entire life outside the circle – who did in fact hail from the Korcari Wilds. Though surprising, such a fact is compatible with both Celene’s eccentric and egalitarian streaks, and her presence doubtless provided fertile ground for proud Ferelden storytellers seeking a foothold in an increasingly Orlesian story.

‘Varric Tethras’ is particularly complicated, because there were between three and five individuals using that name in some capacity during the time of the Second Inquisition. The first definite Varric Tethras was Varric Tethras of the Dwarven Merchants’ Guild, later elevated to the position of Viscount of Kirkwall. This Tethras, hereafter referred to as Viscount Tethras, indeed funded the Deep Roads mission wherein Champion Hawke first discovered blighted lyrium; Merchants’ Guild records are meticulous, and show the financial outlay involved. His records also prove that he received proceeds from the sale of several of the fiction serials published under the name Varric Tethras, including the original _Hard in Hightown._ Current thinking is that _Tale of the Champion_ is his work, and certainly it was generally accepted at the time as a reasonably factual account; however, as the publishing guidelines of the Merchant’s Guild treated fictional and nonfiction publishing differently, we lack the same compelling financial evidence. Thus, some posit two Tethrases already: the novelist-entrepreneur and the chronicler.

The second definite Tethras was the publisher of several unauthorized Hard in Hightown sequels, later arrested in Kirkwall for murder. That those sequels were of different authorship is easily determined, based on changes in prose, punctuation, spelling, characterization, and plot; this imitation-Tethras’s primary historical interest is that he was cited in the creation of early intellectual property law.

The third definite Tethras is the author of _All This Shit is Weird._ Although sometimes filed alongside _Tale of the Champion_ , _All This Shit is Weird_ is a far more parodic account, as may be gleaned from the title, and has been far more heavily annotated over the intervening years. Indeed, everyone who chose to add a companion to the Inner Circle seems to have added scenes to _All This Shit is Weird;_ the University of Orlais houses over a dozen copies, each distinct. _All This Shit is Weird_ is clearly not the product of the criminal imitation-Tethras, as its author was both funny and able to spell, and the criminal Tethras was educated in 9:40 Dragon, several years before its publication. The Viscount Tethras was questioned by the Seekers in conjunction with the Kirkwall Rebellion, and one of his handful of surviving letters makes his opinion of the Second Inquisition’s founders clear; thus he clearly was not the author of a story which glorifies the Second Inquisition as much as the parodist-Tethras does. If extant in the first place, the chronicler-Tethras would be an even less likely author, as the shift from factual to parodic account is _highly_ unlikely under the same name. Thus, we have the Viscount Tethras, the parodist Tethras, the criminal Tethras, and possibly the chronicler Tethras.

There is an unsound but persistent theory of a fifth Tethras, called by the theory’s adherents the ‘true’ Tethras, but more usually called the ‘human Tethras.’ These people posit that the Viscount Tethras’s novels display a view of human noble society inaccessible to even the wealthiest dwarf, and that the author of _Tale of the Champion_ claimed a friendship with Champion Hawke that would similarly only be available to one of Hawke’s fellow nobles. Therefore, they claim, the author must be a human noble, restricted by his class from publishing under his own name, and thus making arrangements through Viscount Tethras (not yet Viscount at the time) to publish and receive payment without exposing himself. Some even assert that it was he who was elevated to the Viscountcy, although how he retained his nome de plume is usually left vague. Others claim that this human Tethras went south from the Free Marches with the Second Inquisition, fought at their side, and published _All This Shit is Weird_ as a factual account. The title, they claim, was a later addition, as were not some but _all_ of the later comic exaggerations.

This theory has no actual historical evidence whatsoever; the financial arrangement it posits has no precedent anywhere in Merchants’ Guild records or in other recorded history; and every argument made for it hinges on the ahistorical notion that human noble society was purely homogenous and wholly isolated from all other aspects of society, and no non-human could possibly be familiar with it, regardless of wealth and fame. Overall, the theory is a piece of historically revisionist bigotry which deserves no more consideration than I have given it here, and arguably deserves even less.

Thus we account for the eight companions-in-battle and four companions-in-command widely ascribed to the Second Inquisitor in popular imagination. For further information on their facts, read _The Companions of Courage_ by M. Falconthrell, published by the Waking Page Publishing House; for further information on what they mean to the people of Thedas and on what their stories tell us about ourselves, try _The People Who Healed the Sky_ by E. N. Cythrene, published by Living Legacy Press.

_Pick up next month’s “Lay Historians” for our featured article on the dramatis personae of the Eluvian War._


End file.
